Prism
by WC Pemm
Summary: But when can I go? You keep saying—the guys at the other place said it was temporary holding. Now you want to ask me questions? They already asked me a bunch of questions, I don't want to do it again. I don't understand why you're keeping me here. I haven't done anything wrong. If I answer the questions, can I go?
1. INTERVIEW LOGS, SIDE A

**INTERVIEW LOGS, SIDE A**

* * *

**I.**

But when can I _go_? You keep saying—the guys at the other place said it was temporary holding. Now you want to ask me questions? They already asked me a bunch of questions, I don't want to do it again. I don't understand why you're keeping me here. I haven't done anything wrong.

If I answer the questions, can I go?

**II.**

Twenty-seven. I think—I was born in … I don't know, why does it matter how old I am? And I know you already have my name. I saw it in that file of yours with my picture. That's not even my name, it's just what I told Markus it was so he'd hire me. My real name's Pyro. Pyro with a capital P.

**III.**

Yeah, Markus is the guy that owns the junkyard.

I don't want to talk about him. What does he even have to do with anything?

Ask me a different question.

**IV.**

I guess I've been living in Chicago for about six months. This is just where the train dropped me after I left my old job. After they fired me.

I used to work at—well, I can't talk much about it. I'm not working there anymore but the NDA lasts until I die and you don't want to mess with them about that stuff. But at my old job I was a pyrotechnician.

I loved that job. God. I burned things. Every day. For hours. It was amazing. All kinds of things. I couldn't even list them all. Most of them were blue. I didn't care what I was burning, honestly, as long as I got to do it. As long as I got to feed the fire.

**V.**

Hey—hey, do you have a match? Or a lighter? No, just—you don't have to give it to me. I can smell the cigarettes on you, c'mon. I just want you to light it, I want to show you something.

There. Yes. Thank you.

Do you see the colors?

**VI.**

The first time I saw the colors it was at my job. My old job, not the one at the junkyard. I guess a lighter isn't strong enough for it.

You know how when fire burns hottest it's white? That's where they come from, that white. It's like a—I think Engineer called it a prism. If you put white light through a prism, it turns into every color.

**VII.**

Who, Engineer? He's a friend of mine. He was one of my coworkers. No, that was his name. Everyone that got hired there had names like that. We had a Scout, a Medic. I guess it's a weird way to base your hiring, but it worked. We were a great team. And none of them minded my fires. I don't know what the hell it is about Chicago. You start a little fire and there's the fire department. Don't they have cats to be getting out of trees? That's what firemen do, right?

That was a joke.

I met a fireman once, when I worked with the team. He was like me. He fed the fire. I'm not sure how he got away with it, being a fireman. When I asked him he said he'd become one to get closer to the big blazes more often. It wasn't nearly as good a job as mine, but I didn't get to burn big things like buildings, so I guess he had that one on me, at least for a while. He could see the colors.

**VIII.**

I said I don't want to talk about the junkyard. I _don't_.

**IX.**

What was I talking about?

Oh, the fire. The colors, yeah, I'll tell you about the colors. Gladly. What do you want to know?

**X.**

It did startle me when it first happened. I thought they had put something in my food, but I didn't eat for three days afterward and it happened again, so that couldn't be it. Then I thought it was the water, but I could only go a day without water. I don't think it was that, though. The only other idea I had back then was they implanted something in my teeth while I was sleeping, like a transmitter that interferes with the brain. Like on TV. But that's the kind of theory you get out of conspiracy nuts and crazy people.

The first time it happened everything was normal. Fire latching its teeth into the cloth, unfurling itself in beauty. I was burning this big tarp bundle, or maybe it was a carpet roll or something, I don't really remember. It was big and heavy and smelled like burnt hair when I lit it up. I stood there and let the fire eat. That's sort of what I call it, I guess, feeding it.

I had this axe RED issued me that I'd used to pin the thing down because it was windy, and as the fire got bigger I pulled it out so it wouldn't get burned. That's when it happened. The fire snapped and the orange bloomed into a dozen different colors, and the air got sweeter. The burnt-hair smell went away and turned into that sweet kind of smoke, you know, the kind that smells like sugar or candy. Under the crackle I could hear the fire singing.

No, that's what I said. Sugar smoke. You're telling me you've never smelled that?

You're missing out.

**XI.**

I didn't see the colors again until I got fired.

I was with Engineer that day. It was a couple years later and I hadn't seen the fire again after the first time. I spent a lot of time with Engineer. He got me more than the others. He was kind of like—the way I am with fire, he was with machines. He built a lot of stuff and I would help him, sometimes. I learned a lot from him. I was the only woman on the team and no one cared, which suited me, but Engineer would go out of his way to treat me like a lady. I think he knew I was a crazy pyro bitch but he was nice.

He was nice…

We had to guard this one room specifically one day, and Engineer's machines were made to do that. It was really cool, the stuff he could make them do, it was like it was out of a science fiction show. He could have it so they knew not to fire on people wearing a certain color.

No, I meant to say that. Fire like gunfire. Bang. They were mounted guns. Everyone at my job used guns, his were just stationary. Once I thought I saw them move on their own but only once.

Anyway the people trying to get into the room broke in one day. It was just me and Engineer and his guns, and we'd just been talking all day because there wasn't anything else to do. It was down in a basement, and it's not like we could watch TV or read a book or something. It was just us. We'd talk about work and I guess the latest gossip and stuff. Who was sleeping with who on the team or that kind of thing. I never really got why that got talked about so much, but I'd go along with it because when we ran out of that Engie'd talk to me about machines and I'd talk to him about fires. I told him about the colors once. He understood.

So we were just talking, and then one of his machines makes this godawful scream. It sort of was. The other side had these other machines they could use to disable ours. But someone had snuck in, because this room didn't have any doors, and sapped the sentry. I hated listening to those things dying. They shrieked like animals.

When I was guarding—when I did most of the stuff at my job at RED—I used this flamethrower I had built when I got recruited. I build lots of things. Engineer liked it, he said it was a marvel of engineering. And it was a great defensive tool. After the sentry died I sat myself down on the briefcase we were guarding and held the trigger while Engineer tried to find this guy. He didn't find him, though. He got stabbed. Right in the back. The other guy was a spy, and you know how spies can just disappear and reappear, like _The Invisible Man_, that's what he did.

**XII.**

No, spies can do that.

Are you sure you're a psychiatrist? I know they said they were sending me for psychological evaluation but you—I mean, everyone knows spies do that.

**XIII.**

So Engineer was dead and so were the guns, and this spy was just grinning at me. He grinned like my boss at the junkyard does sometimes. Leered. That's the word. He leered at me and I charged him right as he pulled out his gun.

If he hadn't tripped over Engineer's body when I slammed my shoulder into him, he probably would have got me. But I'd just watched him murder Engineer and I was seeing red. He went down and I let loose with the flamethrower on his face…

**XIV.**

Crazy pyro bitch. Even the spy never called me that and he hated me.

I don't like any of those words. I'm not any of those words, unless they're Pyro with a capital P.

**XV.**

What?

Oh, no, that's the kind of job this was. License to kill. I don't think I ever saw anyone ever try to do a hostage sort of thing, from either side. I mean, there wasn't much of a point.

So I set the fire on the spy. Like a dog, you know? I like dogs—not that I'm saying fire's a pet. That would be stupid. I burned him up like I burned all the other blue things up. They were the blue team and we were red. I said that, right? So I burned him up and after I got him going really good, it happened. The fire changed color.

I'd been waiting years for it to happen again, by this point. I think I said that. It was so long. Nothing else I did seemed to make it happen. I was dying to see it again, I'd dream about it, it was awful waiting. And getting it again was like getting drugged. It looked like—fireworks or oil slicks, you know how you get rainbows on oil slicks? It was like that. It was so beautiful I wanted to cry. And the smell was just—I needed more of it. The sugar smell.

So I burned him up, and then I burned up Engineer's body, and the guns, and the room, and the briefcase we were guarding. Then I walked out of the room and lit the rest of the base on fire. I guess I got a little crazy. When Engineer came back from being dead he asked me what happened and I couldn't really explain it.

...Yeah, he came back. Obviously he came back. Why wouldn't he? The spy came back too, I think. If I wasn't under arrest I could call Engie and you could see for yourself. Or I guess I don't have his number. But he was the first one to say goodbye to me when RED fired me. You know, for burning down the base.


	2. INTERVIEW LOGS, SIDE B

**INTERVIEW LOGS, SIDE B**

* * *

**I.**

Can I go yet?

...You're going to make me talk about the junkyard before you let me go, aren't you.

Ugh.

Okay.

**II.**

My boss's name is Markus. I started working for him in '72, just after I got fired. I got the job because I know how to build things and Markus's wife likes having handy people around. Markus isn't handy.

I didn't like the job. I wasn't getting paid to burn things anymore and no one there really liked me. And I didn't get to do anything interesting. All I really did at the junkyard was make sure no one broke in or stole anything. I fed the dog. I swept. Sometimes I made signs for sales and notices because Markus can't read very well. I missed a lot of things in school but reading wasn't one of them. I think that was the first reason he didn't like me. Markus's wife couldn't read, either, and neither could his daughters. I think he didn't like that I could, but I was the only one who answered his help wanted sign. So he was stuck with me.

I'm smart. It doesn't take long for me to get bored. I got bored fast at the junkyard. That's why I started setting fires there instead of at home. I was there fifteen hours a day, I didn't have anything else to do.

Markus didn't like that. Markus didn't like a lot of things, really, I was just one of many. He didn't even seem like he liked his wife. He did like his dog, and his whiskey.

It wasn't my fault. I can't tell the fire what to do. Anyway that's why he started calling me a crazy pyro bitch. Behind my back, I mean. I'm not stupid, I know he thought I was stupid because I didn't talk much. He'd call me stupid and things too, to his friends or his wife. I'm not. And I heard him.

I was there for maybe five months before it happened, I guess. Enough that I was sick of Markus and he was sick of me. I'd figured out it was really easy to make him look stupid in front of customers. I liked to see how much I could piss him off before he started grabbing at me. I'm fast, and he was drunk more often than he wasn't. He never caught me.

Anyway on that—on that night it was pretty late. I was hanging out with the dog in the back and just looking around—I liked to take things home that I could use to build things—and I turn a corner and there it is.

Right there in front of me is this massive collection of old doors, all piled up on one another. I felt my pulse go up right then and there. This was the middle of July and it hadn't rained in three weeks. Those doors were dry as the desert. They were even stacked right.

Of course I gave them to the fire.

I did everything right. I moved all the stuff that might have caught fire by proximity out of the way. It wasn't my fault that the wind picked up and started throwing the sparks around.

It wasn't my fault.

I guess I should have run when it started to spread but I hadn't seen a fire that big since RED. My parents always kept me away from fires and stoves and everything when I was a kid. I never got to go to bonfires. And I'd definitely never started a fire this big on purpose outside of my old job, because I'm not stupid.

Except this time I was stupid. I stayed and watched until Markus came running in, weaving and screaming and waving a bottle at me. You bitch, he was yelling, you crazy pyro bitch.

Markus is a big guy. A lot bigger than me. I wasn't paying attention because of the fire. It didn't take much for him to throw me into one of the burning scrapheaps. Then everything hurt too much for me to get away from him.

The fire department got there before the police did, about twenty minutes after it started. The paramedics were even later.

Markus told them a junk pile fell on me.

**III.**

I was in the hospital for a long time.

**IV.**

They let me out when I could walk again. The first thing I did was go home and burn all my fuel reserves. I can't keep track of time very well but I knew it had been long enough that I was going to curl up and die if I didn't see something burn the instant I got out. It didn't give me the colors, but that was okay.

I had a lot of time to think in the hospital.

Once I'd burned it all I got my flamethrower. RED let me keep it since they hadn't paid for it. I went to the junkyard. Markus wasn't there, but there was something there that he kept under the front desk I needed to get anyway. So I got that, and then I went to his house.

It's a beautiful house.

Was.

**V.**

I changed my mind. I like this part.

**VI.**

Markus wasn't there then, either. I don't know if anyone was in the house. I stopped the doors up just in case he was, but I didn't fix the windows. Everything hurt too much, with my scars. I never got scars when I was on the team. Just setting up the fuel made me want to sit down and cry with pain.

Anyway, I burned his house down. It felt good. It felt better when he drove up in his truck.

He came barreling down the driveway and when he saw me, that's when the screaming started. He slowed down when he got closer to me, and stopped yelling for a few seconds. I think he hadn't realized who I was under all the scars. I'm unrecognizable. If you had a picture of me from before you would know.

But he did recognize me after a little bit. He grit his teeth and he snarled at me and he started toward me with his hands outstretched, like he was going to throw me into the fire again. The screaming started back up again.

It stopped when I shot him in the chest with the shotgun I got from the front desk. Really, really abruptly. On the team people usually didn't go quiet that fast. Even when I lit him on fire and watched him burn, he was silent.

I kept waiting for his body to disappear, like at work. I was thinking about what I'd say to him when he returned. They always disappeared before, but for some reason Markus didn't.

I didn't have a lot of time to think about it, though.

The colors came back.

They ate him and the whole house and all the yard and the trees around it. It was like watching someone throwing gallons and gallons of paint on everything. It was beautiful. The air was black with the smoke, and everything smelled like melting sugar, and I just sat and watched it all go up.

Markus was still there even when the fire department showed up. It was weird. Respawn never takes that long.

**VII.**

Yes, that's it. That's everything. See? I didn't do anything wrong. I mean—I mean I guess I shouldn't have burned his house down.

He shouldn't have burned half my skin off.

Can I go now?


End file.
